Chiropractorin North Charleston, SC

Pop-Up Picks is a recurring series in The Post and Courier’s Food Section that previews an upcoming pop-up breakfast, lunch or dinner and the chefs behind it.

Vined The Vegan Experience has been serving up plant-based takes on Southern classics for one year, bringing more vegan options to the North Charleston area.

The restaurant — one of four stops on KJ Kearney’s Soul Stroll event during the Charleston Wine + Food Festival — will celebrate its first year in business with a family-friendly pop-up from 3-7 p.m. July 1.

“We definitely want to do a community event and show our appreciation,” said Vined The Vegan Experience owner Christian Keith.

Before opening Vined, Keith was in finance for nearly a decade. She began experimenting with plant-based foods about five years ago after she discovered she was allergic to pork and beef. She and her family have been vegan ever since.

Keith said she’s always loved to cook, but decided to make the career jump official after the pandemic hit and her son’s daycare closed.

A video game truck, jump castle and local face painting business will set up shop in Vined’s parking lot for the July 1 celebration. Cocktails and other vegan treats will be available on-site, and DJ SCrib will provide the music.

The gathering is a big event for a small restaurant, but there’s a lot to celebrate at Vined, where several favorites have emerged since its opening. At the Soul Stroll, attendees sampled Vined’s signature fried cauliflower “vings” alongside red rice. The crispy bites are served plain or with one of six sauces, like Carolina Gold and Jamaican Jerk.

Alongside other favorites like the plant-based breakfast burrito, Keith recently debuted two new menu items: A fully loaded vegan burger and quinoa-based Life Bowl.

Both have been a hit, and support for the restaurant remains high, Keith said.

“It has been awesome, to say the least,” she said. “We have people that come in, most of them aren’t even vegan; they just want something good to eat.”

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCIV) — Park Circle is officially getting a makeover.

The City of North Charleston is breaking ground Wednesday on a $20 million redevelopment project in the center of the community. The work looks to transform the circle.

Previously, there used to be a community center, a butterfly garden, a green space and baseball field. But the community center was demolished just a few days ago, with the baseball field torn up as well.

City officials say those amenities were outdated and didn’t fit the needs of their citizens today, which leaders hope will change with the completion of this project.

Improvements include a new cultural arts and recreation facility twice the size of the previous building, as well as an all-inclusive baseball field, a 55,000-square-foot accessible playground, and repaving of the walking path around the circle. The playground is expected to be one of the largest on the East Coast.

TJ Rostin, the city’s park and recreation manager, says he believes this will be the first facility of its kind in the Lowcountry and that it will help build a path for more like it in the future.

“This facility is going to be magnificent,” Rostin said. “When we open this, it's going to be one of the most state-of-the-art facilities this region in the Lowcountry has seen in quite some time [and will be something] everybody can have fun with. Just like I said, [the space will] really meet the needs of every citizen we have.”

The redevelopment is expected to take anywhere from 12-16 months, and Rostin says he hopes to welcome North Charleston residents to it by fall of 2023.

While this might be the biggest project to date for the city, it is certainly not the first project leaders have put together, as officials say they are making a commitment to bring more inclusive facilities to North Charleston.

The city just unveiled a new all-inclusive park in the Oak Terrace community in April. They also committed $26 million to improvements the Danny Jones Recreational Complex, which is expected to break ground by the end of the summer.

The new playground that will be built in Park Circle will also be a testing site for external research companies to analyze its impact in the community for future projects.

Rostin says these projects and resources put towards them will help citizens utilize the facilities more, which they hope will lead to more activity in the community.

“We’re starting with the Rec. Department facilities because we know those are the facilities that most people enjoy and use on a daily basis. We're really trying to reach out to every part of our community to make sure what we have and that we're here for them, they can utilize our facilities utilize our programs in any way that they need to,” Rostin added.

North Charleston Mayor Keith Summey said he would have started remodeling the Park Circle area sooner, but the city only received ownership of the land two years ago.

Funds for the project came from taxes and revenue bonds through the tax increment financing district in the city. Funding will also go towards improvements at the Danny Jones Recreational Complex.

The groundbreaking at Park Circle will happen at around 10 a.m. on Wednesday.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

COLUMBIA, S.C. — The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) confirmed that:

The cat and the bat were both submitted to DHEC's laboratory for testing on June 22, 2022, and were confirmed to have rabies on June 23, 2022.

“To reduce the risk of getting rabies, always give wild and stray animals plenty of space,” said Terri McCollister, Rabies Program Team Leader. “If you see an animal in need, avoid touching it and contact someone trained in handling animals, such as your local animal control officer, wildlife control operator, or wildlife rehabilitator.”

Stray and feral cats serve as a significant source for rabies exposure. An exposure is defined as direct contact (such as through broken skin or mucous membranes in the eyes, nose, or mouth) with saliva or brain/nervous system tissue from an infected animal. If pets in the area have received any unexplained injuries or have been seen interacting with feral cats in recent weeks, please contact your veterinarian’s office.

Additionally, never release a bat that has potentially exposed a person or pet. Any bat that could have had potential contact with people, pets, or livestock should be safely trapped in a sealed container and not touched.

“Rabid bats have been known to transmit the rabies virus,” McCollister said. “People don’t always realize they or a pet have been bitten since bat teeth are tiny and bites are easy to overlook."

Because of this, it's recommended to assume that a person or pet has potentially been bitten when:

• They wake up to find a bat in a room or tent; • A bat is found where children, pets, or persons with impaired mental capacity (intoxicated or mentally disabled) have been left unattended; or • They have been in direct contact with a bat.

If you believe that you, someone you know, or your pets have come in contact with either of these rabies positive animals or other suspect animals, please call DHEC's Environmental Affairs Charleston office at (843) 953-0150 during normal business hours (8:30 a.m.-5:00 p.m., Monday-Friday) or after hours and on holidays at (888) 847-0902 (Select Option 2).

It is important to keep pets up to date on their rabies vaccination which is one of the easiest and most effective ways to protect against the disease. The cat is the first animal in Charleston County to test positive for rabies in 2022, and the bat is the second animal to test positive for rabies in Charleston County in 2022. There have been 34 cases of rabid animals statewide this year. Since 2002, South Carolina has averaged approximately 148 positive cases a year. In 2021, eight of the 101 confirmed rabies cases in South Carolina occurred in Charleston County.

Contact information for local Environmental Affairs offices is available at www.scdhec.gov/EAoffices. For more information on rabies visit www.scdhec.gov/rabies, www.scdhec.gov/bats, or www.cdc.gov/rabies.

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Media Relations Rabies

At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, millions of people delayed regular screenings for HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases.

And Mount Moriah Missionary Baptist Church in North Charleston, which has hosted free HIV testing events every year since 2000 through its HIV/AIDS Care Team Ministry, stopped holding them after 2019.

Now, the ministry is hosting its first free confidential HIV testing event since the start of the pandemic.

Marchelle Eichelberger-Brown is a retired registered nurse and heads the ministry.

She said the focus of the event, which will be held June 25 from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. at Mount Moriah, is to get people tested. The ministry will also provide education on the newest treatment options and raise awareness to reduce stigma around the disease.

Now entering the endemic phase of COVID-19, HIV testing is beginning to ramp back up. But Eichelberger-Brown is worried that there are more positive cases than currently documented.

Palmetto Community Care, a Charleston organization that provides routine care for those living with HIV and AIDS, partnered with Mount Moriah to put on the event and has done similar events with churches across the state.

PCC, like many health care organizations across South Carolina, saw a decrease in the number of people getting tested for HIV when the pandemic hit. Officials from the organization said those numbers are climbing higher now that COVID restrictions have tampered down, but they are still not up to pre-pandemic numbers.

And with more than 50 percent of new cases still occurring in Black men and women, the team at Mount Moriah and PCC are trying to get as many people tested as possible.

The good news for people who test positive is that treatments for the virus are available. There are also medications to prevent exposure and possible infection such as PrEP, pre-exposure prophylaxis that prevents people from contracting the infection using antiretroviral medication.

In recent years, scientists found that people living with HIV or AIDS who achieve and maintain an undetectable viral load cannot sexually transmit the virus to others.

This was the case for Betty Saucer, member of Mount Moriah’s HIV/AIDS ministry who was diagnosed with AIDS in 2000. It was her first time being tested for the virus. At the time, Saucer was 56 years old.

“I was no spring chicken,” she said.

Now at 79, Saucer said she’s been living undetectable for the last 19 years and is feeling good.

Stigma around HIV and AIDS persists even though advancements in treatment options are readily available and living with the disease is much easier than it was a few decades ago. But treatments can only help once a person has been tested.

“Don’t be afraid to get the test because it can’t do anything to you but help you move forward,” Saucer said. “Without it, you’re going to die.”

Officials from PCC say the organization is also offering home tests for people who can’t make it to the event. The test will be mailed to them with instructions included.

For more information on at-home HIV testing, visit https://palmettocare.org/at-home-hiv-testing-program.

NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCSC) - The TopGolf in North Charleston is expected to open at the end of this year, but there’s another development right next to it that could bring hundreds of jobs to the Lowcountry.

Crews could be seen on Friday clearing around 30 acres of land for the Uptown at Centre Pointe development, which will bring more amenities to the area between Interstates 526 and 26.

The planned development is located across the street from the North Charleston Coliseum and the Performing Arts Center, along International and Tanger Outlet Boulevards.

“We have two hotels. We have 300 apartments,” RealtyLink Charleston Principal Lenn Jewel said. “We have retail, restaurants, Waterwalk, which is long-term corporate housing and a little bit of office.”

The developer said the project will also have an 800-car parking garage. It will also an entertainment space and several more retail stores to the region.

“What we’ve created here with this dense development is a place you can tailgate before a hockey game,” Jewel said. “You can have dinner at a nice steakhouse before a Broadway show at the PAC. You can have drinks after a concert, so we’re really tied into the Coliseum Complex in North Charleston.”

Last week, the City of North Charleston rezoned 120 acres of land, so the developer could build the project with more density. Overall, it spans around 30 acres, with another 90 acres of wetlands being saved for conservation.

The city said the development is expected to create around 750 jobs.

“The larger part of the development is going to include a lot of mixed-use, which is what we like to see throughout the city is mixed-use, meaning people can live, work and play right where they live,” North Charleston spokesperson Ryan Johnson said.

The developer said the apartments and the hotel should be completed in 2024, with some of the other restaurants and stores possibly opening next year.

“You have restaurants at your feet,” Jewel said. “You have entertainment in the Coliseum at your feet. You’re close to jobs. You’re in the center of all of Charleston and the intersection of both interstates. It’s a great location.”

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